Joe Goense
Block 1 October 21, 2008
Wikispace

The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Article written by John Smith age 34 of U.S. Post written on August 9, 1945
Article written with direct accounts from Smith and Japanese citizens

On this day, August 9, 1945, I am shocked to have seen the most devastating explosion in my own time. I, John Smith, am a journalist that was in Japan at the time of a tragic event that was unexplainable to me at first. At around 9:15 am on the seventh, an American B-29 known as the Enola Gay dropped an uranium atom bomb directly into the middle of Hiroshima (Bombing 1). I have received information on the topic and the numbers are unbelievable. An estimated 60,000 people were killed and deadly nuclear radiation reached over 100,000 people in less than a minute (Bombing 1). Of Hiroshima’s 90,000 buildings, 60,000 were demolished completely in about one minute (Bombing 1). Hiroshima was not the only target picked out by the United States. Three days later, on this very day at 11:02 am, Nagasaki was bombed by a B-29 named the Bockscar (Bombing 1). Nagasaki was hit and 42,000 people were killed while 40,000 more were injured (Bombing 1). When the bomb exploded, 39 percent of all Nagasaki’s buildings were utterly destroyed (Bombing 1). Many people wonder if the United States was just to drop such a massive and powerful bomb on the Japanese cities. I believe the United States had to do what they did. President Harry S. Truman sent Japanese Emperor Hirohito a plea to surrender. Although Japan was in tatters from war, Hirohito declined and remained at war (Walker 2). Harry S. Truman did not want to use his troops to invade Japan so he could avoid casualties (Walker 2). Over the summer of 1945, I heard that something called the Manhattan Project, an operation made in order to create atom bombs, was running. In August, Truman received the right away to use atom bombs against the Japanese from his advisors and he would take advantage of that and used them. To understand the weapon, an atomic bomb is a dropped bomb which is detonated by a process of nuclear fission, or atom splitting (Atomic 1). I would never want to come between America and its unbelievably powerful atom splitting edited bombs. I believe the Japanese should have avoided this by surrendering before the bombs. As of now, it looks like the Japanese are done with war.
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/Nagasaki/images/NG30.jpg